Ah hah! But I KNEW that you faked your own death in order to lead me to my death, and so I faked my OWN death, but I knew you would know that I knew, and therefore...

...BOTH glasses contained the iocaine powder!

Bruce Wayne is dead, not Batman. Isn't the point that they want to name a successor?

I was in my neighborhood bar the night before Thanksgiving, and looked up at one of the multiple TV screens to see a South Park episode that featured, literally, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raping Indiana Jones. And I realized that the process of systematically going through every cartoon character/action hero/muppet I remember fondly from childhood and milking a couple more wan laughs or queasy peering-at-a-car-wreck purchases out of them by depicting them in horrifically violent and/or degrading circumstances must nearly be complete, because I honestly can't think of very many that I haven't to date seen receive this treatment, whether from the lazy comedic minds of South Park or Robot Chicken or from the companies that first created those characters and their innumerable "reboots."

Ugh. I guess soon they'll be done with my childhood and will move on to hilarious and/or "gritty" depictions of the drug addictions/molestations/violent dismemberments of Pokemon and Rainbow Brite.

Now are we going to get whiny emo songs about batman being dead like we did with superman?

JAYSUS FREAKIN' CRAPPITY CHRIST. I *work in* comic books, & I am always, always amazed at the cycle of death in the world of superheroes. Captain America is dead! But no, he's gonna come back as a black lesbian teen. Superman is dead! Nope, just kidding, you can't kill Superman. Ach, you gullible fans, you'll buy anything if we tell you to pack your own black armband.

The thing is, though, superheroes are obviously still our Olympians. We may not be reading the comic books as much, but boy, we can't get enough of those comic book movies.

(& for anyone who DOES still read comic books, please go to the Emerald City Comic Con this spring! Show some love.)

Batman isn't dead, he's a living old geezer in the cartoon 'Batman Beyond'...also didn't they kill Robin ages ago and then bring him back? WTF?

Judging from the picture, I thought the elipsis was going to be followed by "hung like a horse."

@3: What? You do know that Batman didn't stop existing when you hit middle school, right? And that Batman comics have been coming out since 1939? What should they have done, stopped publishing anything related to Batman once you stopped paying attention?

Um... is it really nerdy to say that writer Grant Morrison, who wrote this story, has said for months that Batman doesn't actually die? That Bruce Wayne lives, but abandons the role of Batman, at least temporarily?

It doesn't surprise me that Fox News got it wrong. Because it's Fox News.

Why must you make me go all geek on SLOG? Dr. Hurt wasn't Thomas Wayne. Batman deduced that he was Mangrove Pierce, star of the film "The Black Glove" and accused murderer of billionaire John Mayhew's wife. However Mangrove Pierce revealed, in an insane rant, he was the devil in Pierce's skin.

Now if you'll EXCUSE ME, I have a D&D meeting.

@Aislinn
Is this true? I thought Batman (like Superman) was one of those one-person identities.

@yucca flower
a. The Robin they killed was not Dick Grayson. His name was Todd somethingorother. He has remained dead (with one brief zombie-like exception) and was replaced with a third (but not final) Robin.

b. Every comic book character that has ever died has come back to life, except one: Spiderman's Uncle Ben (For the longest while THREE characters died and never and came back, but since then two have come back)

@Ben - The Batman of 1939 exists on a different Earth. From the Wikipedia page on "Crisis on Infinite Earths":

Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC was notorious for its continuity problems. No character's backstory, within the comic books, was entirely self-consistent and reliable. For example, Superman originally couldn't fly (he could instead leap over an eighth of a mile), and his powers came from having evolved on a planet with stronger gravity than Earth's. Over time, he became able to fly, his powers were explained as coming from the sun, and a more complex backstory origin story was invented. Later it was altered to include his exploits as Superboy. It was altered further to include Supergirl, the bottled city of Kandor, and other survivors of Krypton, further watering down the original idea of Superman having been the sole Kryptonian to survive the destruction of his world. There was also an issue of character aging; for instance, Batman, an Earth-born human being without superpowers, retained his youth and vitality well into the 1980s despite having been an active hero during World War II, and his sidekick Robin never seemed to age beyond adolescence in over 30 years.

These issues were addressed during the Silver Age by DC creating parallel worlds in a multiverse: Earth-One was the contemporary DC Universe, which had been depicted since the advent of the Silver Age; Earth-Two was the parallel world where the Golden Age events took place, and where the heroes who were active during that period had aged more or less realistically since that time; Earth-Three was an "opposite" world where heroes were villains, and historical events happened the reverse of how they did in real life (such as, for instance, President John Wilkes Booth being assassinated by a rebel named Abraham Lincoln); Earth Prime was ostensibly the "real world," used to explain how real-life DC staffers (such as Julius Schwartz) could occasionally appear in comics stories; and so forth. If something happened outside current continuity (such as the so-called "Imaginary Stories" that were a staple of DC's Silver Age publications), it was explained away as happening on a parallel world, a premise not dissimilar to the company's current "Elseworlds" imprint.

Some have said that, over the years as new readers were introduced to the DC Universe, the "multiverse" theory — with its attendant multiple versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, et al. — served to confuse those who did not have a working knowledge of DC's history. The editorial objective of Crisis on Infinite Earths was to streamline all of these parallel worlds into a single, consistent backstory, and thus hopefully make the DC Universe more "approachable" to new readers. It was also to free the company's writers from the "baggage" of 50 years of (dis)continuity.

You do know that Batman [...] comics have been coming out since 1939? What should they have done, stopped publishing anything related to Batman once you stopped paying attention?

Wow, really? The thirties, you say? Well, I'll be damned.

I guess I'm just a little jaded after twenty years of "Dark Knight: Darker and Knight-ier" attempts to sell me back that same character in progressively more "adult" iterations. The typical comics reader is now in his late thirties, literally the same readers from twenty and thirty years ago. The "death of" issues and re-boots and zombie alternate-universe special editions just seem increasingly sad and desperate to me, not just for what they say about the comics industry but for what they say about those middle-aged fans.

But by all means keep funding this process if you find it entertaining.

@11: The Robin that died, which people called a 1-900 number and paid a buck-fifty or so to vote for his death, was Jason Todd, who was recently brought back to life when the Superboy from an alternate universe punched reality. Yes, punched reality. Got up and punched the wall of reality.

This is commonly believed to be the single stupidest thing ever put into a comic book.

Also, people who voted to kill Jason Todd off all those years ago deserve their money back.

I'm Batman.

It's like when you're jerking off? And you're imagining that girl you always see at the bus stop? And then what the fuck, why not change her to your 4th grade math teacher? In a hot air balloon over India? Yeah, that's good. No, wait, back to the girl at the bus stop. And her twin sister. In your parent's bedroom. Yeah... Oh yeah...

And who can say you're wrong? Who can say it makes no sense? I mean, fuck, you are just jerking off, right?

That's how comic books work. Exactly the same as jerking off.

Bruce Wayne must be like 97 years old by now anyway, and getting a little stiff in the knees for all those crime-fighting acrobatics.

I'm The God-damned Batman.

DC will just Retcon the universe again, like they did with all the Crisis series, and 52, and Countdown.

I highly recommend Justice League: New Frontier for anyone who like the "Silver Age" DC comics. To me it ranks up there with Watchmen and V For Vendetta for story.

I am The God-Damned Incredible Sulk.

And no, I don't feel like letting it go.

Why can't we just calll TDK Returns canon and be fucking done with it again?

Jessica claims I only comment in pauls's threads about comic books. She is obviously wrong.

All I know is, X-Men started sucking right after the Brood. And has never recovered. And that's when my childhood ended.

Also, elenchos is a god.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0616358/

Except, you know, he's not.

I'm Spartacus.

Batman? Comic books? Grow the fuck up.

It's sad. The big comics publishers are like sulky teens. "I'll kill my character! That'll make them pay attention to me!" It's nothing that a boy, a beer, and the submarine races couldn't cure.

@13 said: "...who was recently brought back to life when the Superboy from an alternate universe punched reality. Yes, punched reality. Got up and punched the wall of reality."

That is freaking fantastic.

That has made my whole day.

Returning the favor:
http://www.superdickery.com/index.php?op…

Neither Bruce Wayne or Batman is dead. The CEO of DC comics was been quoted as saying as much. "Bruce Wayne will return." He isn't all dead, he is just "mostly" dead.

Someone call Miracle Max!

Sven - You should check out Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. Easily the best thing they've done with the group in years. I hadn't read them in ages and it was really easy to jump into. It's all in trade paperbacks now.

As for Batman, Bruce Wayne is taking time off to investigate Hurt.

Jason Todd will win the "Battle of the Cowl" to become Batman with Damien Wayne as his Robin.

After a year or so, Jason will die, again, bringing Bruce Wayne out of retirement.

Status quo restored.

Bruce Wayne has got to almost 90 years old.

It's about time someone else put on the Batsuit.

The old geezers at the movies; John McClane, John Rambo, Rocky Balboa and Indiana Jones prove you got to hang it up at some point.

There's no body. He's not dead.

Muedered by Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend?

@3

if you actually paid attention to that episode of South Park, the literal raping of Indiana Jones by Spielberg and Lucas was actually a very spot on piss take on the fact that yes indeed, our childhoods are not safe from constant revision, case in point the horrible new Indy movie. it wasn't supposed to be a nostalgia thing trying to make Indiana Jones suddenly a "dark" character or whatever.

@11: Holy shit! There was some sort of crisis? I had no idea! I actually thought the Bruce Wayne from Detective #27 was the same character as in today's comics! I was very confused as to how he looked so young! Thank you for explaining to me the most significant and well-known determining factor in DC Comics continuity!

FlamingoBanjo,

You can't honestly claim the comic minds behind South Park are lazy? The "Terrorists Bomb Imagination Land" episode? The "Ladder To Heaven" episode? The Paris Hilton "Stupid Spoiled Whore" episode? They offer some of the best social satire we've ever been offered - yes it's wrapped in crude gutter humor - but it's truly without equal.

As for "depictions of the drug addictions/molestations/violent dismemberments of Pokemon and Rainbow Brite" - they already did that in the "Imagination Land" episode. Sorry.

What @18 said. New Frontier is brilliant on every single level. If you can buy the deluxe hardcover edition, do it--you'll have no regrets.

I skipped this entire arc in the Batbooks because I can't fucking stand Grant Morrison. He peaked on Animal Man, Doom Patrol wasn't unbearable, but I can't think of a thing he's done in the last 5 years that was worth a fart.